Sephora teens are teens who hang out at Sephora — and they’re a point of cultural anxiety because 1) they’re buying a lot of makeup and skincare products and 2) we have complex and contradictory feelings about when we should start caring about makeup and skincare products, even though absolutely everything in our culture tells young people they should’ve started caring about these things yesterday. Do Sephora Teens just want a public place to hang out without their parents? Didn’t we also play around with makeup at their age? But wait where are they getting all of this money? I I was so thrilled when Elise Hu — author of a whole book on the contemporary skin care industry and mother of three teen/tween girls — agreed to come on as co-host for this episode… and I can’t wait for your thoughts.
Show Notes:
We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:
Sydney Sweeney (and Gen-Z Stardom)
Learning to craft / make things / hobby-around-the-house
Trad wives, featuring a co-host who used to be one
For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES
Artificial Intelligence (we’re gonna see if we can figure out an actually interesting theme here, so send us your weirdest or most mind-boggling questions)
The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (my dream here is like an Odd Lots guest who doesn’t have private equity brain, please let us know if you have suggestions!)
Contemporary ideas of self-care
Buy Nothing groups and/or the current state of the secondhand market
Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment
You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)
For today’s discussion: What did you spend your money on as a teen, and where did you get it? What still feels weird about Sephora t(w)eens, and how would you talk to your own Sephora t(w)een about beauty culture?
